Seminari
Thursday 14/10/2021 @ 11:30, JAC - Sala IV piano Battiferro (remote)
Kathryn Kreckel (University of Heidelberg), "Mapping the Ionized ISM in Nearby Galaxies"
The ionized interstellar medium (ISM) provides crucial insights into understanding baryon cycling within disk galaxies and tracing radiative and mechanical feedback from young massive stars. With new VLT/MUSE optical integral field spectroscopy, the PHANGS team now has a wealth of emission line maps that trace different ionization sources and physical conditions across 19 nearby disk galaxies at the 50pc spatial scales needed to isolate individual ionized regions (e.g. HII regions, supernova remnants, planetary nebulae) from surrounding diffuse ionized gas. Together with dedicated HST and ALMA observations, providing characterization of the young star clusters and giant molecular clouds, we can now explore a comprehensive view of the chemo-dynamical evolution of the star formation process across different environments. I will present our most recent results measuring the gas phase oxygen abundances across thousands of HII regions, and quantifying the mixing and feedback processes that we observe. Within the context of the large scale galactic environment, these studies have implications for our understanding of how spiral structure acts to organize and mix the ISM, and regulate star formation.